Absurdity Quotes - Page 20

• There's something very sinister about a woman who is predatory but has an absurd voice working as a disservice to her.

  Claudia Black

  Voice, Absurd, Sinister

  4 Copy quote

• False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Swings, Giving, Reason

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.57

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

  Denis Diderot

  Miracle, Prove, Contrary

  "The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations". Book by Norbert Gutermam, 1963.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, I knew instantly when I met my wife what a good relationship it was, compared with what I had been doing for the previous 20-odd years. She is my buddy, my partner, my friend. And part of being a comedian is that it's your job to look at life and regurgitate it in a funny way, to point out its absurdities.

  Greg Behrendt

  Jobs, Years, Good Relationship

  7 Copy quote

• The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being - that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This is the difference between the approach of the philosopher and that of the poet; the difference, to take an example from another sphere, between the idea of God in the works of Thomas Aquinas or Spinoza and the intuition of God in those of St. John of the Cross or Meister Eckhart - the difference between theory and experience.

  Martin Esslin

  Ideas, Differences, Intuition

  Martin Esslin (2009). “The Theatre of the Absurd”, p.25, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Criticism is now become mere hangman's work, and meddles only with the faults of authors ; nay, the critic is disgusted less with their absurdities than excellence ; and you cannot displease him more than in leaving him little room for his malice.

  John Dryden

  Leaving, Excellence, Criticism

  John Dryden, John Mitford (1836). “The Works of John Dryden: In Verse and Prose, with a Life”, p.424

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Religion itself is an absurdity and an anomaly, and paganism is acceptable only because it represents that purely orgiastic phase of religion farthest from reality.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Reality, Anomalies, Phases

  H. P. Lovecraft (2010). “Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.139, Lulu.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Light, Able, Modern

  Letter to Reinhardt Kleiner (14 September 1919), in "Selected Letters I, 1911-1924" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (pp. 86-87), 1965.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Heart, Men, Anchors

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.80, Stanford University Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We look at, the absurdity of the system provides us the most material. And that is best served by sort of the theater of it all, you know, which, by the way, thank you both, because it's been helpful.

  Jon Stewart

  Looks, Way, Helpful

  "Jon Stewart's America". "Crossfire" with Paul Begala, Tucker Carlson, transcripts.cnn.com. October 15, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is one thing, then, to say, "The Bible contains the religion revealed by God ," and quite another to say, "Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God." If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.

  Lionel Trilling

  Errors, Metaphor, Accepted

  Lionel Trilling (1939). “Matthew Arnold”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Dream, Thinking, Waking

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...”, p.102

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to to maintain the existence of Nothing.

  Frederick The Great

  Movement, Body, Void

  Letter 221 to Voltaire on November 25, 1777. "Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great", translated by Richard Aldington, 1927.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.

  David Hume

  Philosophical, Discovery, Topics

  David Hume (1875). “Essays Moral, Political, and Literary”, p.79

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?

  Vaclav Havel

  Meaningful, Would Be, Reason

  "Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala". Book by Vaclav Havel translated by Paul Wilson (Chapter 5: The Politics of Hope, p. 114), 1990.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.

  David C. Coates

  Laughter, Animal, Men

  15 Copy quote

• The institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out.

  Charlie Pierce

  College, Deceit, Fundamentals

  4 Copy quote

• Christianity - An old metaphysical romance, filled with marvels, contradictions, and absurdity, born in the ardent imagination of Orientals, has spread into our Europe. Enthusiasts have purveyed it, careerists have pretended to accept it, imbeciles have believed it.

  Frederick The Great

  Europe, Imagination, Romance

  19 Copy quote

• Some have speculated that the way [Albert] Camus died made his theories on absurdity a self-fulfilling prophecy. Others would say it was the triumphant meaningful way he lived that allowed him to rise heroically above absurdity.

  Aberjhani

  Meaningful, Self, Way

  Aberjhani (2014). “Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry”, p.80, Lulu.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many businessmen fail to understand Python principles--the ultimate absurdity was an offer from America to buy the 'format' of the Python shows, that is, Monty Python without the Pythons--corporate methods do not have the conceptual framework to deal with an anarchist collective, run by intelligent and arrogant comedians who have proved that their method works.

  Robert Hewison

  Friends, Running, Failure

  4 Copy quote

• Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.

  Thomas Huxley

  God, Philosophical, Trying

  "On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and Its History". Essay by Thomas Henry Huxley, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1874.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reductio ad absurdum is God's favorite argument.

  George Tyrrell

  Argument, Ads

  7 Copy quote

• I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly.

  Rainn Wilson

  Real, Thinking, Play

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jeffrey Lewis sings as though absurdity were truth, and truth absurdity. And I think I agree with him.

  Paul Banks

  Thinking, Agree

  4 Copy quote

• Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Fate, Men, Nausea

  4 Copy quote